Badlands Bride Page 6

  "What did she say?" Hallie asked.

  "She wants to know what you said."

  Hallie relaxed. If DeWitt ate with them regularly, it must be safe. "Tell her I'm grateful for her kind invitation."

  Yellow Eagle spoke to Chumani in a few hard syllables. She smiled and led the way into the sod house.

  The small room was clean and orderly. Chairs on one side of the blackened fireplace were upholstered with hides. A solid table and benches sat on the other. Chumani ges­tured for Hallie to sit. She prepared a plate from the kettles over the fire and placed it before her. Hallie picked up a smooth bone utensil and tasted the gravylike mixture poured over biscuits.

  "This is delicious."

  At a grunt from his mother, Yellow Eagle translated and Chumani gave her a cup of coffee. Hallie had never cared for coffee, but she took several sips so she wouldn't offend her hostess. The woman sat across from her with a quill needle and sewed a sleeve into a leather shirt.

  Hallie wondered for a moment why the woman and her son hadn't made an appearance the night before and then realized they'd probably assumed Mr. DeWitt was bringing a wife home and they had given him privacy.

  How curious that these Indians were living here among the motley bunch of inhabitants in Stone Creek. Now that she thought about it rationally, she realized that most news about the tribes in different areas relayed that they'd signed treaties and were living on land allotted by the government.

  "How did you come to be here?" she asked, unable to quell her curiosity.

  "We are Oglala," the boy replied, as if that answered everything.

  "Where is the rest of your family?"

  "Most are at the reservation without enough to eat, treated like dogs."

  "Is that why you're here?"

  He looked at his mother before answering. "Here we have food and firewood."

  "You take care of yourselves?"

  "My father was murdered."

  The bit of information shocked her. "How awful."

  "Cooper is my father now," he said, raising his chin indignantly.

  That took a few minutes to register. Hallie regarded the soft leather shirt in the Indian woman's hands. It was iden­tical to the one Mr. DeWitt had worn yesterday. She raised her eyes to her pleasant, dark-skinned face. Chumani made his shirts?

  Chumani spoke softly with her son while Hallie stared into her coffee. "Te-wah-hay," she said.

  "What did she say?" Hallie asked.

  "We are Cooper's family," the boy said.

  A spark of disappointment and anger flickered in her chest. The boy considered DeWitt his father, and the woman made him shirts. She'd heard of mountain men and trappers taking Indian wives. The idea wouldn't be disturbing by itself. She stared into her tin cup.

  What really sent a jolt of annoyance sparking through her blood was the fact that he'd advertised for a wife when he already had an Indian woman hidden away back here. What kind of man was Cooper DeWitt? And why had he wanted to bring a city woman out here?

  She recalled the wording of his letter. He'd needed a woman to read and write. Someone to help him with his business. She remembered his words about not expecting the bride to fall at his feet. Hallie's eyes wavered back to Chumani. Now she knew why nothing but education had been important. Cooper DeWitt already had a wife.

  Chapter Four

  Silently fuming, Hallie finished her breakfast and managed to drink the cup of strong black coffee with only the merest grimace. Did this Indian woman know Mr. DeWitt had sent for a bride? Everyone else knew. But she obviously didn't speak English; it would be easy for him to hide it from her.

  A bride wouldn't be so easy to hide, however. Hallie watched Chumani intricately stitch a row of tiny beads across the front of the shirt. What did the poor woman think of Hallie spending the night in DeWitt's cabin? Hallie knew nothing of Indian customs. Perhaps bigamy was acceptable. Perhaps, no matter how uncouth the man was, it was better having him take care of her than starving on a reservation, as Yellow Eagle had pointed out.

  Whatever did the woman do to keep herself busy all day? Hallie would go crazy in this cramped space with only a little sewing to occupy herself.

  "Thank you for the meal," Hallie said.

  Yellow Eagle translated.

  Chumani gave her a soft smile.

  Hallie had a hundred questions she'd like to ask. She turned to Yellow Eagle instead. "Do you know where Mr. DeWitt is now?"

  He nodded.

  "Can you tell me?"

  "He's working."

  "I only want a word with him."

  "He won't like it."

  "I can deal with that, thank you."

  The boy snorted and stood.

  Hallie nodded politely as a means of excusing herself from the table, and followed Yellow Eagle from the sod house and toward the freight building. Leading her around the side, where the sound of wood being stacked echoed, he stopped and pointed, a smirk on his youthful face.

  Three bare-chested men were unloading the back of an enormous flatbed wagon. Hallie had never seen so much skin in her life! She stumbled over a clump of grass and caught her balance.

  Two more wagons stood to the east of the building, bulg­ing tarps evidence of similar loads. Two of the men, whom Hallie had never seen before, noticed her, and stopped their work to stare back, pushing their sweat-stained hats back on their heads.

  The third, Cooper DeWitt, pulled a stack of lumber for­ward, the muscles in his broad back and shoulders flexing beneath the sun-burnished skin. When neither man picked up the other end, he became aware of their distraction and turned to the cause, studying her from beneath the brim of his hat.

  A queer enchantment held Hallie motionless. It was im­possible not to look. The morning sun gave his chest and shoulders a warm glow. The wind caught the thick blond rope of hair hanging down his back, and it fluttered like the tail of a wild horse.

  He came to life, gave the others an aggravated glance and shoved the boards back into the stack. Speaking curtly to the men, he turned and walked toward her. Hallie made up her mind not to stare at his shocking display of flesh and muscle. He made a rapid series of gestures. Yellow Eagle replied, gave Hallie a smug grin and ran back toward the soddy.

  Hallie watched his approach, appreciation and apprehen­sion tumbling in her stomach. Determinedly, she thought of the kind Indian woman making him a shirt, and annoyance won out. "I need to speak with you."

  "Stay near the house," he said, ignoring her request.

  She kept her eyes on his face. "I am near the house."

  "I mean, you shouldn't come here."

  "Why not?"

  "The house is safer."

  His words managed to take off some of her cheekiness. She glanced around. "Do the grizzlies come around in the daytime?"

  "Animals aren't the only danger."

  Her attention wanted to flutter downward, but she stead­fastly stared into his eyes. "What do you mean?"

  He set his jaw, accenting his generous lips and square chin. "Men come and go here all the time."

  "I was raised around men, Mr. DeWitt. I'm not intimi­dated." All the men she'd been raised around were gentle­men and kept their shirts on, but she wasn't going to point that out.

  "The men in these parts don't see many women. Espe­cially not young, pretty ones."

  She couldn't help the flush that rose in her cheeks. He thought she was pretty? Hallie had to remind herself why she'd come out here. "I need to speak with you."

  "I'll see you at mealtime."

  "This is important."

  "I have work to do. I'll see you at noon."

  "What do you expect me to do until then?"

  His assessing blue eyes flicked over her hair and face. "What did you plan to do when you came here?"

  "I planned to get a story!"

  "Then write a story." He turned and walked away.

  Hallie's gaze dropped from his broad back to his narrow waist. She didn't let herself take note of
the muscles beneath his buff-colored, fringed trousers.

  Frustrated, she turned back toward the house. Boston Girl Dies Of Boredom, she thought humorlessly. Chumani was working beside a fire pit, so Hallie sauntered back to watch her. The top of a good-sized cylinder of tree trunk had been hollowed into a bowl shape. Chumani placed damp kernels of corn in the well and pounded them with a wooden beater.

  Before Hallie's eyes, the corn was ground into meal. "That's amazing!"

  Chumani glanced up from her work and smiled.

  "I've never seen anything like this before. At home we shop for meal and flour at the mercantile. It's all sewn into bags when we get it."

  The black-haired woman nodded and pounded.

  Hallie sat on a nearby stump and watched. She ignored the echoing sound of lumber being stacked. The Indian woman really was pretty. Her black hair caught highlights in the sun and black lashes and brows complemented her sleek brown skin. She moved and worked with grace and confidence.

  Hallie could see how she would appeal to a man. Besides her unassuming beauty, she was hardworking and quiet. Was that the kind of woman Cooper thought he would get from the city, too? What kind of woman would submissively sit by and allow him to dally with another woman? The thought got her hackles up again.

  Hallie glanced at the pot bubbling over the fire and the rustic tools gathered nearby. Chumani had been working on this earlier, and had apparently joined Hallie inside while she ate, as a courtesy.

  Yellow Eagle brought firewood, stacked it a safe distance from the cookfire and disappeared.

  Growing restless after an interminable length of time, Hallie asked, "Can I help?"

  Chumani tilted her head.

  Hallie pointed to herself. "Me. Help?"

  She made a useless gesture of busy hands, but Chumani seemed to understand. She led her to the pot over the fire where corn bubbled in blackish water. Demonstrating, she carried a wooden scoopful of corn to a piece of burlap stretched between four sticks stuck in the ground, and poured the corn onto the fabric. Next, she took a dipper of fresh water from a bucket and poured it over the kernels. The water rinsed the corn and ran through the burlap.

  She handed Hallie the scoop.

  "I understand," Hallie said, grateful for a task to keep her hands and mind busy. "Rinse the corn. I can do that." Energetically, she set about the task. After several scoops of corn, she raised the bucket. "Water's gone."

  Chumani nodded.

  Hallie studied her.

  The woman pointed at the pail, at another one nearby, then behind the soddies.

  Finally comprehending, Hallie muttered, "Go get more." She carried the buckets and headed in the direction indi­cated, discovering she was upstream on the river she'd washed in and drunk from the night before. She staggered back into the clearing. "These are a lot heavier on the way back."

  Chumani's innocent smile gave her a moment's wonder, but she shrugged it off. She'd made five more trips up and down the riverbank before the corn was rinsed. Chumani's job was looking better and better all the time.

  Hallie assisted her in moving the heavy kettle from the fire. Chumani ran green sticks through several sickly pale headless blobs of flesh with flopping appendages and hung them over the fire.

  Hallie's stomach turned. "What are those?"

  "Gu-Que," Chumani replied. At Hallie's lack of com­prehension, she tucked her arms in and flapped her elbows.

  "Some kind of bird," Hallie said with an uncharacteristic lack of appetite.

  Yellow Eagle brought several pieces of bark and placed them beside the fire. Chumani stirred together a batter using the cornmeal and poured it into the concave bark strips. She placed them before the fire.

  The birds turned a golden brown and the smells actually resembled an appealing dinner cooking. The batter in the bark bowls gradually turned into crusty cornbread.

  Chumani spoke to Yellow Eagle and he ran toward the freight building. Several minutes later DeWitt and the two men-—all properly clothed, thank heavens—appeared, and everyone traipsed into the sod house. DeWitt stood aside and allowed Hallie to enter ahead of him. Their eyes met briefly.

  "Mr. Clark," DeWitt said, indicating the middle-aged man with lank brown hair that hung to his shoulders. "And Mr. Gilman. They're freighters from up north."

  The second man was younger, with shoulders as wide as DeWitt's, and gray eyes that roamed her face and hair be­fore she lowered her gaze, unwilling to witness the rest of his perusal.

  None of them pulled out a chair for her; she did it herself, pretending she hadn't noticed.

  "Unusual to see a young gal like you in these parts," Mr. Clark said. "How'd you come to be here?"

  "Well, I—"

  "She's meeting her husband here," DeWitt interrupted from the seat he'd taken beside Chumani. Hallie noticed he'd recently washed and the hair at his temples was damp. "They'll be moving on to Colorado."

  Hallie glared at him, but he ate his food placidly. She kept silent through the rest of the meal, except to ask Yellow Eagle what kind of bird they were eating.

  "Pheasant," he replied curtly.

  She'd eaten pheasant before, but their preparation gave the meal a whole new perspective.

  The freighters thanked Chumani and headed out.

  "Are you going to keep your word and speak with me?" Hallie asked DeWitt as he finished his coffee.

  His blue gaze bored into her. "Go ahead."

  She glanced at Chumani. "May we go outside?"

  He stood and ushered her ahead of him.

  Hallie stopped behind his log house and turned. "First, why did you tell those men a lie about me meeting a hus­band?"

  "For your safety."

  "What do you think you're protecting me from?"

  "Men out here don't live by the civilized rules you're used to," he said. "You should've learned that from your stage trip."

  The reminder of what could have happened to Olivia and the rest of them at the hands of those stage robbers squelched any other objections she may have had. Hallie rushed on to the real problem. "I'm disappointed in you."

  His expression didn't change. He waited.

  "I think it's deplorable that you sent for a bride when you already have a wife!"

  He frowned. "Chumani?" he asked.

  "You know very well that I mean Chumani. Perhaps she doesn't mind sharing a husband with another wife, but I can assure you that any wife you get from back East will have plenty of objections."

  His fair brows rose, wrinkling his forehead.

  "What were you thinking of?" Hallie asked, waving her hand, inspired by her topic. "If the men out here expect women to endure the hardships of the travels and this land, then they'd better start living by more civilized rules."

  His expression didn't flicker.

  "The first rule being one wife per man."

  "She's my brother's wife, not mine."

  "I really thought you were serious about wanting a wife, the way you fixed up the house and all, but—what?"

  "It's the duty of a dead warrior's brother to take his wife as his own."

  Hallie frowned, mulling over his words. His brother was an Indian? How could that be when he was as white as she was? The possibilities intrigued her. There was a story here, somewhere, and a fascinating one at that!

  "Chumani agrees I should have a white wife. I provide for her, but she's not my wife. Not in the way that you're thinking."

  Hallie's neck and cheeks grew warm. "I see."

  "May I work now?" he asked.

  She nodded and he walked away. She would have to break through his reticence to get to the story inside.

  She helped Chumani wash the dishes in a tub outdoors, more at ease beside the woman now that she knew she and Cooper weren't…involved.

  Returning to the afternoon's work, she felt a calm sense of relief seeping into her pores along with the afternoon sun. Cooper didn't have an Indian wife after all. The odd reas­surance puzzled her. Why should she ca
re?

  She made it clear that she'd like to try her hand at pound­ing the corn. Chumani cooked more kernels in the kettle, throwing ashes into the water to give it that black color. She cooked and rinsed and carried water, and Hallie's arms and shoulders grew numb from the repetitive and painful task of grinding. By supper she could barely raise her arm to lift the bone eating utensil.

  "Miss Wainwright?"

  Hallie jerked her head up, realizing she'd been drifting off to sleep sitting at the table. "Yes."

  "You can start earning your way," DeWitt said.

  Irritation wailed from her tired muscles. "I thought I did that today."

  "Did you?" Across the table he regarded her. Firelight bounced off the golden glints in his hair and shadowed the chiseled planes of his face. His cheeks showed the barest growth of stubble, like fine-grained sandpaper, and Hallie had the surprising urge to rub her knuckles across his jaw to discover its roughness.

  With concentration, she relaxed her fingers on the fork. "I helped Chumani grind the corn. I carried water and rinsed and even pounded."

  "Chumani's done that alone for years."

  "Well, I—I…" Unexplainably, his words hurt her. She'd failed to win his approval even though she'd learned quickly and shared a good portion of Chumani's work. Why was his approval or disapproval important?

  She was trying too hard, as usual. "I thought I was help­ing," she said, carefully hiding her disappointment.

  "You owe me. Don't forget that."

  How could she forget a mistake like that?

  "One of the reasons I sent for a wife was so Yellow Eagle would have someone to teach him to read and write."

  She set down her fork and glanced at the boy. He stiff­ened immediately. The worried look he shot Cooper turned into a glare when he regarded her.

  "And the other reasons?" she asked.

  DeWitt took the last bite of his supper and washed it down with coffee. "My business has grown fast. I can't keep track of orders and payments and shipments like I should."

  "You need a bookkeeper?"

  "Yes."

  She regarded Yellow Eagle. He had pursed his lips and sat defiantly, staring at his plate. "I'll need his cooperation if I'm going to teach him."